Category Archives: Harborview

US News & World Report is offering a “sneak peek” at its 2016 Best Graduate School Rankings due out next week. University of Washington will be ranked in the top 10 in the nation for research and for primary care.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

The King County resident who had been tested for Ebola has been found not does not have the virus, according to the results from the Washington State Public Health Laboratory, Public Health – Seattle and King County said Monday.

The man had developed a fever and a sore throat after traveling in the West African nation of Mali and had been admitted to UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center for evaluation. By late Sunday afternoon, his symptoms had improved and he was able to go home.

Following the CDC’s protocol for anyone arriving from Mali, his health will continue to be actively monitored by our Communicable Disease and Epidemiology staff until he has cleared the time frame in which Ebola could develop.

A King County man who developed fever after returning to the area from Mali has tested negative for Ebola, Public Health – Seattle & King County health officials said Sunday.

The man who also had a sore throat — but none of the of symptoms typical of Ebola infection — was admitted to UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center for evaluation.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends close monitoring of anyone with fever and other symptoms of Ebola who has recently travelled in Ebola-affected countries. Mali has had only 8 cases of the disease.

The grant is Cambia’s largest ever given to any organization and will come in four separate parts, creating three endowments totaling $8 million and $2 million dedicated to immediately improving care at the center.

Although all hospitals in the state are making plans to rapidly identify, isolate and safely evaluate people with suspected Ebola, eight hospitals are preparing to care for a person with Ebola for the duration of the illness.

“The chance of a confirmed case of Ebola in Washington is very low, but in the event it happens we want to be sure we have the capacity to provide ongoing care to a patient,” said Dr. Kathy Lofy, state Health Officer. “Patients with Ebola can become critically ill and require intensive care therapy. Care needs to be delivered using strict infection control practices. We are working with each of the committed hospitals to ensure we are coordinated and thorough in our response.” Continue reading →

A: It was the view of the UW that in order to continue our participation in the WWAMI program we had to be “100 percent in,” and that was the term that was used by UW. And by that they meant we could not continue in the WWAMI program while pursuing aspirations to have a second medical school in the state.

Harborview Medical Center has volunteered to become one of the hospitals willing to consider receiving U.S. patients evacuated from Western Africa for treatment of Ebola.

The decision follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s request last week to find hospitals around the country that could treat citizens who have been on the frontlines of the international crisis.

“Consistent with Harborview Medical Center’s mission and role of serving the public in Seattle, King County and our region, we’re willing to consider accepting U.S. residents who may be infected with Ebola,” said Dr. Timothy Dellit, associate medical director of the Seattle hospital. “It will depend on the hospital’s current capacity and our ability to maintain our critical functions.”

There are no patients with Ebola in Washington, and there are no plans to evacuate patients to the region in the near future.

There are no patients with Ebola in Washington, and there are no plans to evacuate patients to the region in the near future. However, the hospital and state and local health officials are ready.Continue reading →

With more people obtaining health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, places like Harborview Medical Center are providing much less “charity” (uncompensated) care. The Emergency Department there is as busy as ever, though.

UW officials say the study wildly over-estimated the cost per student to attend medical school at UW.

They also claim a new medical school would suck resources from the existing medical program known as WWAMI, which is named for the five states it operates in: Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Washington State University is part of the program.

Doctor shortages and economic development: Those were the two major issues Washington State University officials emphasized Monday after last week’s release of a feasibility study that examined the prospects for a new medical school in Spokane.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation on Thursday to make Medicare take the financial status of hospital patients into account when deciding whether to punish a hospital for too many readmissions.

The bill attempts to address one of the main complaints about the readmissions program: that hospitals serving large numbers of low-income patients are more likely be penalized. Continue reading →

Children and teens are more likely to wear life jackets when out on the water when adults onboard are wearing them as well — yet relatively few adult boaters in Washington state wear life jackets while boating, according to recently published studies by UW Medicine researchers at Seattle Children’s Hospital and Harborview’s Injury Prevention & Research Center.

The findings, the researchers write, underscore the important role adults can have in encouraging the young to wear life jackets when out on the water.

Wearing a life jacket has been shown to reduce a boaters risk of drowning by half. Nevertheless, nationwide only about 15% of boaters wear a life jacket or personal floatation device (PDF), and, as the new studies show, Washington state boaters do little better. Continue reading →

At Seattle’s largest safety-net hospital, the proportion of uninsured patients fell from 12 percent last year to an unprecedented low of 2 percent this spring—a drop expected to boost Harborview Medical Center’s revenue by $20 million this year.

The share of uninsured patients was cut roughly in half this year at two other major safety net hospitals—Denver Health in Colorado and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Hospital (UAMS) in Little Rock, Ark.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the health law’s expansion of coverage to more than 13 million people this year has been the nation’s safety-net hospitals, which treat a disproportionate share of poor and uninsured people and therefore face billions of dollars in unpaid bills.Continue reading →

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